


Return Fire

by SylphOfPaperPlanes



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Fake AH Crew, GTA AU, Swearing, Violence, what else did you expect with Michael's pov
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-23
Updated: 2014-07-23
Packaged: 2018-02-10 03:23:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,475
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2009085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SylphOfPaperPlanes/pseuds/SylphOfPaperPlanes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He lived for the loud and dangerous. The world was a mess of noise that he could melt into and get lost in the screaming disarray and he searched for the sounds that made his world complete, even if he had to make them himself.<br/>---<br/>In which Michael gets caught and dragged in for questioning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Return Fire

Some people had asked him how he could hear so well with being the explosives expert. He would always reply with something about it being in the Jersey blood, how it ran through his fingertips and thudded through his ears over the sound of any variety of bombs in any vicinity.

In reality, it was because he lived for the loud and dangerous. The world was a mess of noise that he could melt into and get lost in the screaming disarray. He searched for the sounds that made his world complete, even if he had to make them himself.

He could hear the torrential rain coming from the wall behind him. An outside wall in an interrogation room? They did things better in New Jersey. And that was saying something.

He rolled his neck, letting the joints sound off like fireworks before settling in the metal chair.

As well as one could with handcuffs attached to the table, really.

He gave them a light tug, staring at the ring that connected them to the metal surface, and the two cuffs attached to either wrist. A surprising amount of give, but not enough for him to do anything more than stand and move a few inches anywhere. He could probably get out in a few minutes, had he not been under surveillance, but the two cameras were trained on his slumped figure to his left and right were obviously being used to watch him.

The door in front of him opened with a quiet click, and closed behind two officers with the same noise.

“Michael Vincent Jones.” One of them said, skinny, hair greying even though he seemed rather young.

“The one and fuckin’ only.”

“Do you know why you’re here?”

“‘Cause you came into my apartment in the dead of night and tore me out of the goddamn shower?” His words were surprisingly casual for the subject, and he savored the way the words sounded so calm and controlled.

“Do you know what _you did_ to get arrested?” He corrected, sending a tight smile in his partner’s direction, and then back at Michael.

“I’m pretty sure it has something to do with the thirty-something counts of homicide, six of armed robbery, illegal possession of arms, oh, and something to do with being in a tank and shooting like fucking crazy while suspended from a helicopter. Not sure what the charges are on that one, but it’s probably pretty damn illegal.”

The other cop’s eyes widened in shock. “That was you?” His voice seemed to be weighted with a faded canadian accent and Michael briefly wondered if he had confronted one of their past intel providers with a similar tint to her words.

“I dunno man,” He shrugged as far as he could with his wrists bound. “There are a lot of flying tank incidents, we could be mixing a few up-”

“We’d like to talk to you about your involvement with gang activity.” Skinny Cop cut in.

“Fake AH? Shoot. Can’t promise that we won’t return fire, though.”

“If you’re implying what I think you are, I’ll be the one asking questions here.” Skinny walked closer and rested both palms onto the table. “So tell me about your leader. Geoff.”

“I know what you know, man.” He pushed his glasses further up his face, and met the other’s blue eyes with his own brown. “He keeps to himself. Hired us, and I guess we just fucking stayed with him.”

“You don’t know anything about him? No criminal history you’re aware of? No personal contact? Family?”

“We’re his family.” He paused a second. He liked the string of words. Something satisfying about being included in the boss’ clusterfuck. “If he has any relatives, he sure as hell wouldn’t bring ‘em here. This place is fucking nuts, even without us.” A lie of course. He knew all about the boss’ life. Even met his family once or twice. He’d never seen an ex-military man with such a big heart. It made even his insults sound like you were family. It was a voice that could only be described as sounding the way whiskey tastes on a summer evening with friends.

This seemed to satisfy the cop. “And what about Haywood?”

“That sick bastard, don’t even get me fucking started. Let him do whatever he wants. You’ll lose more men than you save if you do anything other than that. I’ve seen the things he’s done.”

“Like what?”

His eyes fell distant. Pissing the Mad King off usually ended up with the world crashing down on you and a particularly threatening laugh echoing in your head. A sound like wind chimes and shotgun blasts. “Even we have rules. He breaks those too.”

“He’s talking in more riddles than the girl with the puns.” Canadian muttered at Skinny. So they had met Barbara.

“Listen asshole, you ever fucking heard of the Edgar Johnson case?”

He was met with two blank stares.

“Keep it that way.”

“Anyway,” Skinny said, the tight smile back on his face. “Jack?”

He sighed. “You’re treating me like a fucking caged bird, but that doesn’t mean I’m gonna sing. I’m not some loose lipped little bitch who’s gonna spill the guts of his friends.” What he had already spoken was out of pride for his crew. Nothing they didn’t already know. But he knew they had near nothing on Jack, and that was the way the team liked it.

But that made them all the more desperate for intel. “Not even a speciality?”

“Jack of all trades, mind the pun. Now if you want any of your precious fucking information you’ll have to ask the right questions.” Michael let his nails tap against the metal table, filling the room with the echo of something close to poker chips on a gold ring. Another reminder. Never play poker against the jack of all trades. You’d be surprised at the tricks he has up his sleeves.

“Then would you be willing to answer something about the kid that goes by Brownman?”

“No, but the NYPD will give you a fucking earful.” Ray’s experience in New York was infamous in the group. The quiet kid from the east coast (Michael was the loud one) was one hell of a force to be reckoned with. A one-man hit team whose hands fit every trigger perfectly, it was a shock to see how quickly he could quiet down from his “normal” life. One second he was the life of the party with enough tales to silence any room, and the next he was all business. He had gotten so good that he could reload any gun twice as fast as the next person, the clicks and snaps of metal on metal filling the air in a practiced rush. The city was really just a game to them, and Ray was one hell of a player.

“Fine. What about the brit?” It was obvious that Skinny was starting to lose his patience, and Michael only smiled.

Truth was, he was only half listening. His head was tilted just so that it would look like he was merely slouching while he was actually listening to the rain pound the walls outside. “I think there are better names to call my boi, don’t you?”

“Your... boy?” The canadian asked, squinting in the direction of one of the cameras.

“Yeah, my boi. It’s a nickname, Keep up with the program, dumbass.” Something new curled in with the cacophony of raindrops. Tires over blacktop and through puddles. No one else seemed to hear it, but then again, no one else was listening.

“The prick’s still a fucking tourist. Joining in on the action is his way of sightseeing, I guess. He plays mind games with guns, but I bet you already knew that.”

“We do.” Skinny said quickly enough that it was obviously a lie. “So what about his attack patterns? They’re seemingly random, even with the rest of the team all in sync.”

“Attack patterns? He doesn’t fucking have attack patterns. He’s fucking mayhem incarnated. Like a little kid with a rocket launcher.”

He was on a roll with the lies today. Gavin had to be one of the smartest people on the team, even if he didn’t realize it. “The brit” himself loved to learn how the world worked. He would prod and poke at the universe and fate just to see what made it tick. He’d push gravity to its limits and still evade death with one swooping gesture.

There was nothing better in the world than seeing his face light up at an explosion. Michael remembered the first time Gavin had seen a fireball on the team. His face lit up with a dangerous mix of starry eyes and a smile made of steel, and he let off a whoop of pure english adrenaline. From that point on, he always had a second set of plans. Sure, he always followed Geoff’s missions with his limited precision, but he always tried to test the waters, do something reckless to satisfy some twisted curiosity and light up his eyes again.

“Yeah. Sure.” Skinny muttered, stepping back to talk quietly with Canadian Accent. Not much for Michael’s interest, really, so he tuned the noise out. He focused on the rain again. The storm was slightly lighter than before, the drops letting slightly more sound through. Cars on the nearby highway buzzed past as a quiet hum in the back of his mind, along with something that seemed curiously like the whir of helicopter blades spinning to a halt.

But that wasn’t what he was listening to.

His mind caught muffled summer-evening-whiskey commands, met with a reply of english adrenaline and the rapid snaps of a gun being reloaded at double speed. He doubted any of that could be heard by anyone with normal ears inside the building, but Michael Jones was never one to be very “normal” in the first place. He held back the widest smile he’d had in a long time.

“I’m telling you, all riddles.” Accent said, slightly louder than the rest of their conversation, and Skinny rolled his eyes before looking back at Michael. “Time to cut the crap about your teammates that we already know. So let’s hear it, what poetry do you wanna start spinning about yourself, Jones?”

He stayed silent for a long moment, head bowed as though he was thinking.

The quietest sound of something being thrown at the wall made him lift his head slightly. And then there was a sound that only a person who had worked with explosives his entire career and an amazing ear would notice. The ticking of a bomb.

_He had sixty seconds._

“I think it’s my time to dole out some questions, if you don’t mind.” He couldn’t contain his smile while he gave the handcuffs an experimental tug, still firmly connected to the table. There was enough slack for what he had to do, though.

 _Forty five_.

“What the hell do you mean by that?” Skinny demanded, slightly taken aback. He took a long look at the cameras in the room, as though he was pleading for them to come and help.

 _Help won’t come in thirty two seconds._ He thought.

He avoided the question, fidgeting the cuffs around his wrists and shifting his seat slightly. “Well officer,” He started, idly counting in his head. _Seventeen, sixteen, fifteen..._ “Remember what I said about us returning fire?”

Before either officer could respond, an echoing laugh made of wind chimes and shotguns tore through the air from outside, and Michael kicked back his chair and stood, swinging under the table until the restraints at his wrists came taught. He was curled completely under, save his hands clinging at the edge of the table for support.

And then the world exploded in stone and sound.

For a brief moment, he relished the sound of the blast and debris, but that was jarringly stripped away with a chunk of brick slamming into his shoulder, even with the protection of the table. That would hurt like hell in the morning, but the pain was numbed by the energy of the situation.

Three surefire shots sounded off, and he watched as links from his handcuffs fell away while his wrists were no longer bound together. Definitely Ray’s handiwork.

He ducked out from under the table to leave, finding an impressive looking crater in the side of the building. He sprinted out to join the pouring rain and a familiar getaway car, and he climbed into the passenger seat to be met with the sound of Gavin already talking at a mile a minute behind the wheel while he drove off.

“God Micoo, didn’t expect you to be bloody caught like that, covering your tracks n’ all. If anything, maybe Ryan, though I’d doubt he do anything other than downright slaughter every friggin’ fool that set foot on his doorstep-”

“God fucking damn it, drive straight, will you?” Ray called from the backseat, where Michael hadn’t even noticed him leaning out of the window and shooting at the police cars following in their wake.

“Sure thing...” The brit hissed, right before rapidly jerking the steering wheel and bringing them under an overpass at nearly double the speed limit.

“Why the everloving fuck did you let him drive?” Michael called back to Ray, who merely shrugged while he reloaded.

Michael made quick work of the unconnected cuffs still at his wrists with a set of pliers from the glovebox, leaving them a mangled set of metal at his feet while he rubbed the skin they had chafed at. “Never thought you guys would come around. Almost had to start spilling legitimate intel.”

“What’d you tell them?” The other replied, taking a hairpin turn and nearly tipping the car over.

“That we weren’t gonna be fucked with if it was the last thing they did- Wait where the fuck are the gents?” He was sure he heard Geoff and Ryan before the explosion, and with them, Jack couldn’t be far behind.

As soon as they saw clear sky, Gavin tilted his chin up, out the window. “Took the chopper route.” Sure enough, there was a helicopter mid-air with bullet spray spreading out below it. Police sirens began to thin out with the aircraft’s attack, and Michael could distinctly hear the maniacal laughter he knew horrifyingly well coming from the sky.

He dared a second to rest his head against the seat and let the sound of shots and sirens consume him in a strange sort of serenity.

“After we lose these guys, what do you say to me buying my boi a drink?” A faceless british accent asked through the bliss, and Michael didn’t even have to open his eyes to reply.

“Sounds pretty fucking great.”


End file.
